What do you hate the most?
I hate redundancy and complexity when it’s the result of laziness or politics and serves no helpful purpose. I hate flourescent lights. I hate white noise. I hate learning stuff. I hate car commercials.

What do you love?
I love textures, and the sky, and understanding how something works. I love the perfect silence after a baby stops crying. I love cotton. I love good, simple food. I love sitting outside at sunset. I love water. I love something about everything that I can’t put into words. I fucking LOVE the internet. I love sleeping. I love school. I love people who love me back.

I just watched an itsy-bitsy spider crawl out of the drain into our bathroom sink. Down came the rain…

I wish I had a camera right now to show you the scene I am witnessing. I’m sitting on the back patio. It’s 65 degrees, and I’m in the shade. There is a nice breeze, and birds everywhere are calling out to each other.

Kevin is pulling our very serious child around the yard in his radio flyer. Nicolaus is practicing all of the important safety measures: sitting straight up in his seat, hands firmly gripping both sides. Meanwhile Mouse is joyously running huge circles around the two of them in all his greyhound glory, leaping over the green grass and purple wildflowers.

Glory be to God for dappled things, and also bless the folks at SBC Inc. for developing the DSL technology that allows me to wirelessly surf the internet while I sit out here and enjoy them.

Critical tasks for the day

1. Put puffed kamut into the gas tank of my little tikes car.
2. Feed bottle to pet giraffe
3. Bring all books in the house to my mother. She requires them all to be stacked on her lap and her laptop computer immediately.
4. Sweep the floor.
5. Shoe-related tasks:Put shoes on the monkey. Put shoes on self. Throw shoes. Remove my father’s insole pads from his shoes. Replace with small toys and/or puffed kamut.
6. Attempt to use mother’s keys to unlock the front door and escape
7. Identify every wheel and air vent in the house, ensuring that the adults will be ready in case of any emergency that requires the use of wheels and/or air conditioning
8. Find and eat puffed kamut in the gas tank.
9. Feel the hair on my mother’s legs while laughing. This will make her feel good.
10. Beep everyone’s nose. When possible, place ladybug sticker on noses, to add to the dramatic effect of the beeping.

So Nicolaus just brought me a plastic bottle filled with white rice. Tee he said. Tee!

What’s that, baby?

Tee! He says it a bunch more times. He’s really excited, but I don’t know why. Finally he shakes the bottle with one hand and says it again Tee!, and with the other hand, pokes his finger into his mouth.

Teeth. He thought the rice looked like teeth. I am at once astonished by his insight and disturbed that he thinks we would fill a bottle with human teeth and give it to him to play with.